My fifth Phunt 50K is this weekend. I was thinking about my training leading up to the race and realized that I probably need to throw some quotation marks around that word. I got a little burned out last year with all of the miles I logged (2500 – new annual best!) and so dialed back the effort a bit after Devil Dog last month. Let’s just say my snooze button is starting to develop a groove in it.
This isn’t to say I haven’t been running. I have. I’ve been getting in a solid 30-35 miles a week. It’s just not what anyone would call training. Lots of chill miles with little walk breaks whenever I come to a hill (even small ones). My paces are slow enough that some people would even question whether I’m actually running or not.
So I don’t really call what I’ve been doing as training. Frankly, that’s a word from the dawn of my running. It entails structured workouts and 20 week day-by-day plans. It’s about building my body up to do more, faster, better, and for longer.
At this point in my journey though I’ve kinda moved beyond that. I don’t need to train my body any more to do incredibly long runs in a myriad of conditions. I’ve spent the last 8+ years doing that. So my body’s pretty good at it at this point.
I realize that this is going to come off as more than a little braggy. A little, “oh, it’s just a 20 miler.” It’s not like I got to this point overnight though. The genetics fairy did not bless me with anything extraordinary. I’m just a guy. A guy that has run over 19,000 miles over the past 9 years. A guy that has done 50+ runs over 30 miles. And 193 of twenty or more miles.
Running is my lifestyle. I don’t need to train to get into ultra shape at this point because I’m always in ultra shape. Every week I’m out there logging miles. They may not be the fastest miles being laid down and I’m not knocking out high mileage weeks, but it’s enough for me to run whatever I want to run pretty much whenever I want to.
We like to make things more difficult than they really are. The whole point of training is to build yourself up to a point where you can accomplish your goals. Once you’ve reached them, it takes much less effort to continue. Think maintain more than train. So Saturday, I’m going to pin on a bib and run my recent weekly mileage in one go. I won’t be setting any records out there, but I should be able to enjoy myself regardless.
And if I’m wrong, I’ll at least get a good story out of it.